Project Resources

The only way to get to excellence in public education is to teach our way there.

School districts throughout the country are continually assessing how their teaching evaluation systems can better identify and support great teaching. Each evaluation system is unique, but the challenges of researching, testing and rolling out new systems are common to all.

Below are links to tools and resources to help address some of the common, practical problems of developing and implementing teaching evaluation systems.

Student Survey Teacher Q and A. A one-page interview with National Teacher of the Year Sarah Brown Wessling on how student perception surveys have helped her and her students.

Cambridge Education & Tripod Survey Assessments were used in the MET project analysis as a tool for capturing students' views on their classroom experiences. Download the surveys used in the MET project by clicking below:

These surveys may be used for noncommercial purposes. For additional information about the surveys, administration, analysis, reporting and professional development, contact Ashley@TripodEd.com.

The New Teacher Project (TNTP) published a companion guide to the MET project's "Gathering Feedback for Teaching" report. TNTP's guide, called "MET Made Simple," outlines practical implementation recommendations based on TNTP's experience helping states and urban school districts across the country improve teacher evaluation systems.

Ensuring Accurate Feedback from Observations by Craig Jerald provides lessons from leading practitioners about how to ensure that classroom observations produce accurate results. The report offers methods to ensure that classroom observations, which are a lynchpin of new evaluation systems, provide teachers with the critical feedback they need to improve their practice and addresses key considerations and lessons from early implementers. The report examines topics from how to select a rubric to training and certifying raters.

This section of the Battelle for Kids website includes materials to help practitioners understand value-added models as tools for measuring effective teaching. Included is an FAQ on Value Added, a short backgrounder, "About Value-Added Analysis," and a white paper "Selecting a Growth Measure: A Guide for Education Leaders," which explains and compares different methods for estimating effectiveness by examining student learning gains.

"Effective Teaching: What Is It and How Is It Measured?" This paper, co-authored by Steve Cantrell, Gates Foundation chief research officer, and Joe Scantlebury, Gates Foundation senior policy offer for U.S. Program Advocacy, discusses the importance of robust, transparent teaching effectiveness measures that work toward achieving the best outcomes for the largest numbers of students and teachers.

The MET project developed a "Validation Engine" that systems will be able to use to analyze their classroom observation instruments themselves to determine the extent of observer agreement and the extent to which results align with student outcomes. Developed by MET project partner Empirical Education, the "Validation Engine" began beta-testing with selected school systems in spring of 2011. This brief described the tool: "Validation Engine for Observation Protocol."